Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Defeat in Detail

The Battle of Raate Road, one of the key battles of the Winter War, started on this day in 1939. The road through the woods was narrow, allowing only a single file of traffic, and the forest prevented mechanized elements from getting off the road. The Finns attacked on skis and used a tactic where they cut the lines and then segregated the Russians into small groups that could not receive support from the rest of the line. They called this tactic "motti", the Finnish word for a cord of wood. They literally would chop the Russians up into small pieces of wood and feed them to the fire. The Finns lost about 400 men to the Russians 10,000.